


monster

by orphan_account



Series: bits & pieces [3]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Frankenstein (Mary Shelley), Canon Era, Gen, M/M, Out of Order, Supernatural - Freeform, disconnected scenes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-06
Updated: 2019-11-06
Packaged: 2021-01-24 11:44:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21337696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Out of order scenes from the Frankenstein AU that no-one asked for.
Relationships: Enjolras/Grantaire (Les Misérables)
Series: bits & pieces [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1379005
Kudos: 28





	monster

**Author's Note:**

> Ok, so this is a failed project - Grantaire and Victor Frankenstein do not mesh, and it's a totally unethical love story. However, I'm really pleased with some of the writing, and as it does not really fit into any kind of narrative I'm just going to post bits and pieces of it here. Maybe it'll inspire someone, I don't know. Anyway. Enjoy.
> 
> TW: not entirely sure - don't know if there are so far but I'm sure we'll see.

**Grantaire | August 1830**

Grantaire wakes up slowly, stickily, to a headache pounding like battle-drums on the inside of his skull. His mouth and throat are drier than the Algerian desert currently being stolen from its inhabitants by the new king’s diplomats, and his stomach sloshes. He groans and stretches, feels the creak of his back and the needle-sharp edges of sunlight trying to slip under his eyelids. Why does he always forget to shut the blinds when he’s on an all-night drunken inventing bender? Why is he so unkind to his future self?

Then comes the rustle, and a voice in the general vicinity of his bed saying: “Good morning. I thought you were never going to wake up,” and Grantaire will deny the high-pitched scream and flail upright that was his response for the rest of his life. He clutches his bedclothes to his bare chest and squints at the angelic blonde man sitting perfectly upright in Grantaire’s one good chair; the angelic blonde man who, Grantaire realises a second after it’s become uncomfortable, is not wearing a single stitch of clothing.

Grantaire definitely wasn’t out last night. He _definitely_ remembers being banned from the Cafe Saphir until he’d paid penance for ruining Mother Desrosiers’ favourite rug, and since he’s never been very good at knowing which fellows at more traditional establishments are up for a bit of cheerful buggery, he’s never bothered outside of the safety of the Saphir. So not a shag. In any case, he’d surely remember shagging a man this beautiful. There really is no other word for it. The mid-morning sunlight slicks along the diamond-sharp edges of his pale cheekbones and arrow-straight nose, tangles in his hair, which falls over his high forehead in a profusion of golden curls. His eyes are bright blue, cerulean even, and his fair brows are drawn together in what could be termed “polite confusion.” Lord Almighty, Grantaire really hopes they didn’t fuck because he’d rather like to do it again, and forgetting a chap’s name after sex rarely goes well.

“Is there any particular reason you’re staring at me?” the man asks.

“Is there any particular reason you are buck-ass nude and sitting in my apartment? Has Aphrodite blessed me? Are all my dreams coming true?” Grantaire fires back before his brain catches up with his tongue. The man just looks even more confused.

“Have you taken leave of your senses?”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“You haven’t answered mine! Don’t you recognise me?”

“Recognise you, I, ah,” Grantaire forces himself to stop before something even more obscene comes barrelling out of his mouth.

“You just created me and you don’t know who I am!” the man says, and that’s when Grantaire notices the neat, thin lines of black stitching over the man’s shoulders and down the centre of his chest like a seam, mottled on each side by faint blue bruising. They _are_ seams, Grantaire realises as he watches the man uncross his legs like he doesn’t quite know what to do with them. It comes flooding back; the feeling of thread beneath his fingers, of drunken insanity like wings bearing him along, decisions made with the alcohol a translucent barrier between his head and his hands. There might have been lightning involved. Actually, there’s no question of might, he thinks - the bang-flash machine is on the floor by the window, as are the bundles of sage and the black occult candle. A tray of needles and scissors of various sizes is balanced on his easel, just under the portrait of Titania he’s been attempting to paint for the last year.

“Created you?” Grantaire croaks. The man’s eyes narrow.

“Considering the fact I know nothing apart from waking up to find you bent over me sewing my left arm on and muttering to yourself, and then going and collapsing on the bed without as much as a by your leave…”

“But how do you speak such perfect French!?”

“Is that was this is? Speaking? French?”

Grantaire groans again, buries his face in his hands, hoping that this is a dream, hoping that by closing his eyes his beautiful Galatea will disappear. He has made a person, why the fuck was that a good idea? Sadly, his drunken self has disappeared into the mists of time, and he’ll never know what bizarre twists of logic led him here. He’s just stuck with a beautiful, angry man, sitting opposite him and judging, and isn’t it a truth that one doesn’t know one’s worst nightmare until it starts playing out in front of one’s eyes?

“Are you alright?” the man - no, creature, man-shaped creature - asks.

“I’m not drunk enough for this,” Grantaire says. “Fuck.”

*

Half an hour into his panicked breakdown, which the creature had watched with detached, equanimous curiosity, there are feet on the creaking stairs outside Grantaire’s personal circle of hell and a knock on the door.

“What?” he shouts, getting off the bed in a half-arsed attempt to get between the creature and whoever wants to come in. His back and bad leg protest vehemently and he wobbles.

“It’s Chetta, idiot. I hope you’re decent because I’m coming in!”

“What no wait…”

The door flies open and Musichetta stands in the doorway in a suitably dramatic fashion, a new blue dress setting off her brown skin and sharp dark eyes to perfection. Her bright smile fades as she looks between Grantaire and the creature, who has only moved to turn its head towards her.

“Who’s this?” she says, suddenly quiet, hooking the door shut with her foot. “Am I interrupting?”

“Interrupting, no, oh, I just…”

“R, you know I don’t care, I just didn’t see you at the Saphir last night and…this is not the right time for a lecture, I can go…”

“Oh god please don’t go.”

“What on earth is the…”

Grantaire takes two seconds to balance the risks, decides that he can’t just stay here with the thing he just made sitting and talking like an actual human man, and says, “I made him. It. I made it. It’s a person, I think, and I don’t know what to do and I…”

“Made…it…” Musichetta says, slowly, looking over at the creature. It looks back, then shrugs, gracefully.

“As far as we both know,” it says, perfectly calm.

“How, exactly, Lucien, did you decide to make another human being?”

Uh-oh. Her voice has gone freezing cold, her eyes flash. Grantaire braces himself. “Um, my brain.”

“Yes I’m aware your brain was somehow involved, much as the opposite appears true.”

“I’m…sorry?” Grantaire hazards, spreading his hands. It was apparently the wrong thing to say. Musichetta glares, takes in a deep breath, and proceeds to rip into him in fast, furious Bengali. He catches a few words here and there, doesn’t need to understand her to stand with his head down and take it. It’s probably deserved this time. He maintains that the bang-flash machine and the mechanical fire-lighter were very useful, despite her protestations when he spat them out after other drunk inventing benders.

After she’s done, she stalks over to his wardrobe and flings a shirt at his head, gets a blanket out and hands it to the creature. It looks at her, and she looks back.

“I’m not angry at you,” she says. “Just that idiot over there.”

“I know,” the creature replies calmly. “What’s this? And why’s your skin darker than his?”

“This is a blanket,” Musichetta says, “because it’s not good manners to be naked around people you don’t know, especially if you don’t have consent. As to your second question, I’m from India, which is hotter so we have darker skin. Grantaire’s paler than me because he’s from France, which is further towards the North Pole.”

“France is…”

“A country, a nation-state. Grantaire, a little help here?”

“Our overlords. Our masters.”

Musichetta levels him with a freezing glare before turning back to the creature. "Basically a large community ruled over and administrated by another group of people, in our case, our new king and his government.”

“Ah yes, not that it does much good.”

“Grantaire.”

“Sorry.”

Musichetta finds the footstool and sits down on it, propping her chin on her hand and gazing at the creature speculatively, who doesn’t seem to mind or notice being stared at. At least it’s wrapped the blanket around itself so there’s less distracting skin on show. Grantaire averts his eyes after a moment, finds the waistcoat he’d evidently abandoned last night on the floor by the bed and bends to pick it up, taking up his cane too for want of something to do with his hands.

“Do you have a name?” Musichetta asks the creature eventually, and Grantaire could weep because thank god she’s here with all her practical unfussiness, thank god for her kind heart, for their long years of friendship. He has no idea what he’d do if he was left to his own devices.

“What’s a name?”

“I just called it “the thing” whilst I was making it. I think. I was so drunk I don’t really remember.”

Musichetta ignores Grantaire magnificently. She’s getting very good at it. An apt pupil. He’s so proud.

“A name is the words you use to refer to one person, sets them apart so you know who you’re talking about. My name is Musichetta Chaudhuri, his is Lucien Grantaire, but we don’t use the whole lot normally. Most people call me Musichetta or Chetta, and him Grantaire or R. Following?”

“Yes. I don’t have a name.”

“Would you like one?”

The creature shrugs, elegantly. Grantaire puts the cane down with a thump, starts reaching for his sketching pad but Musichetta shoves it out of reach with a look that tells him he got into this mess, he’s not letting her deal with it alone.

“You need to choose one unless you want us to keep calling you “the thing,” Grantaire says.

“How am I supposed to choose a name when I don’t know what counts as one?” the creature snaps, and Grantaire holds up his hands in surrender.

“Well,” Musichetta tilts her head. “You’ve got to decide whether you want to be a man or a woman. Biologically, you appear to have a penis, so that indicates man, but if you’d like to be a woman or somewhere in-between then you…”

“Chetta,” Grantaire interrupts. “That is incredibly sweet, but it’s only been alive for what, six hours?”

“Five and a half.”

“Five and a half, thank you. Gender is maybe too much right now.”

“Fine. Well. Being a man is easier to start with. If you change your mind, all you need to do is say the word,” she says. “Men’s names.”

Grantaire gets up, limps over to his bookshelf and pulls down the latest trash novel he’s been half-heartedly reading whenever he can find the energy, flips through the pages. “Um, Chateaubriand, Robespierre, Napoleon…”

“You can’t just suggest famous people,” Musichetta tugs the book out of his hand. “That’s unfair.”

“It could go on to take over the world, you need a memorable name.”

“Memorable doesn’t have to mean ridiculous.”

“Ange, archange, cherubin, angelus…”

“And now you’re reciting all the variations of the heavenly host, fantastic. Why are you so annoying?”

“Well it looks like an angel from a certain angle…maybe I should have added wings…”

“…no.”

“I like it.”

Both Musichetta and Grantaire turn to the creature, who tugs the blanket a little further around its shoulders. “What?” Grantaire says, stupidly.

“Angelus. Ange-el-us. Enj-ol-us, Enjolras.”

“You are aware that’s totally made up?”

“I like it.”

“You like it. You have opinions. You have just chosen the strangest, most made-up name in the history of made-up names this is…”

“Fitting,” Musichetta stands up, puts her hands on her hips. “He’s kind of made-up, too.”

“It.”

“He. We decided on man, for the moment, therefore you need to use the correct pronoun. You made a person, Grantaire, not a machine, now you have to deal with the consequences.”

“What are these strange things you call consequences?”

“R.”

“Fine, fine, he. He. I have made a person, oh my god, does that mean I’m a parent? I am so not cut out to be a parent, I am going to ruin him, please take him to someone who actually knows what they’re doing…”

“A parent? You barely function as an adult human,” Musichetta says bluntly. “I’m not even considering letting you have free rein with him, but you’re not allowed to wash your hands of him either.”

“Mehhh.”

“Welcome to adulthood, Grantaire, it’s been a long time coming.” Then, to the creature, “Hello, Enjolras, it’s lovely to meet you. Welcome to the world.”

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on Tumblr - @barefoot_pianist


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